131 Responses to “Officer tries in vain to catch people fleeing from van”

If you don’t come from an area where the cockroach reference is offensive, good for you. However, if you said it in some areas of LA or NYC, you would be far too dead to post a comment here. #1 may have been completely innocent, but it’s still an unfortunate metaphor.

Cockroaches….I like the “in which the light has just been turned on”, but I think describing humans as cockroaches is giving humans too much credit. Cockroaches are too hard to obliterate from the planet.

Lately I’ve been describing humans as ants. Got the idea from a Bill Bryson travel book where he mentioned two countries where the local nickname for foreign tourists who arrive every summer is “ants” in the native tongue.

But I’ve been thinking a lot and expanded it to “Humans and their agendas and silly goals and plans and mechanizations are not as important as they like to pretend. Humans are just ants in the grand scheme of the universe, even in the grand scheme of the all-time existence of this planet.”

Though sometimes I watch the TV show “COPS” and see really stupid and/or really selfish violent people and just think “Grind them into cat food.”

So here I am reading the comments before watching the video (aka I don’t know who it is the cop is chasing yet) , and saw nothing racist or dehumanising about the cockroach comment. Didn’t even cross my mind. I wonder what that proves?

Before there was a visible asian population in Ireland (only 6 or 7 years ago), some friends had used the word ‘Paki’ in the same contraction convention as Aussie or Brit or Dub (if you’re from Dublin), there was no offence intended.

A friend from London got immediately very uncomfortable, and eventually came to say how offensive the word ‘Paki’ is in the UK. No doubt, it came as a shock that they had been interpreted in a racist way.

Like the present situation, there was an innocent non-racist intention, compounded by the very nasty experience of the word in different mouths.

So, no the word itself isn’t racist, but the gangs of hoodlums threatening to burn the Pakistani residents out of the UK, were. It’s sad but true, that even unintentionally, you can say the exact wrong thing, and end up offending.

The best thing usually, once the true nature of the communication has been established, is for each side to acknowledge the differences in language, and try benefit from the notion that not everywhere shares the same cultural biases.

Heh, I’ve watched it now, and I had to look very hard to notice that maaaybe one of the dudes was kind of brownskinned. Maybe it’s because I’m not American but my radar just doesn’t seem to be well-tuned to detect possible racial profiling.

Regarding the white space, I just got into the habit of typing my comments in a text editor since the comment-submitter was being moody.

So sometimes the ramblings that I think better of and edit away leave a couple of extra line returns floating around at the bottom, and being invisible, I forget to delete them. So when I copy out the text, the returns come too.

13 people in the van would justify a traffic stop even if they weren’t illegal.

I can’t laugh at those cops. They’re stuck enforcing ridiculous laws. Meanwhile, they have to deal with the fact that the laws they are bound to enforce lead people to flee into a desert where they may very well die.

It is very reminiscient of clown cars and cockroaches, but to me it is a very sad video. The worst part is the obvious family at the end, man, woman, and young boy. You can see the man hold onto the boy before they all go for it. Every illegal knows they face that kind of danger when they come, but they come anyway because their home country SUCKS and they have little power to fix their situation.

Thank God you were born in or have legally established yourself in a country where you can work and be free, and stop mocking the desperation of those who are still struggling. (and to me, it is the music that really makes it mocking)

Oh, and Mark, the Chinese may create positive incentives not to have a second kid, but they also force abortions, sometimes during the third trimester. And don’t start telling me abortion isn’t wrong–these abortions violate the rights of the pregnant woman in addition to any the unborn child has.

@antinous – fair enough, I understand you have to make the call in a live situation. It was just my first disemvowelling (albeit not for making racist remarks) so having a bit more explanation of your position is appreciated.

Man, if we only had something to keep these “cockroaches” from getting into our perfect country. Something like a giant wall, like in China, or Berlin. Those seemed to work pretty well.

I’m a white, corn-fed kid from the middle of Iowa. Both my pops and my Grandpa served in World War II and Viet-Nam. I was in the boy scouts, marched in ever 4th of July parade, and raised the flag with my Dad in the front lawn.

My wife’s familia comes from El Salvador. Her cousin, who I love dearly, remembers coming over the border in the trunk of a car when she was a child. The rest of her family was snuck in for about $2000 a piece. Some of the men were allowed into the country due to their civil war. They are now all citizens, property owners, and contributing tax payers in this great country. Most have gone to college and in my opinion are better a better class of citizens then most of the trailer-trash meth-heads I come across here in Lincoln, Nebraska.

For the love of everything good, let these people in, let them get jobs, and let them pay taxes legally.

If you don’t watch it I’ll start telling Sven and Ole jokes and you don’t want that.

I was sitting once in the Scandinavian Deli in SF when the waitress went up to a table of guys and said, “Are you finished?” They all screamed, “No! We’re Swedish!” and laughed for about twenty minutes. It’s good that there are people who think that absolutely everything is funny.

The cockroach comment didn’t really anger me. My El Salvadorian wife probably would have said the same thing. Here’s some irony. El Salvadorians make comments about Mexicans all the time. Just like the English make fun of the French and vice versa.

Racism is learned, and most of us speak before thinking. When I was a kid, we would all pile up on some kid in the playground and it was common for it to be called a “nigg*r pile”. Most of us had never even seen a black person other than on Sesame Street, so we had no reason to hate black people. It made no sense, it was just learned. Now we call the same act a dog pile, which really is more fitting.

Mark taking offense to the cockroach thing is both troubling and hilarious.

Douglas adams referring to humans as monkeys could be seen as racist f y’r prn t nthnkng knjrk ssssmnts.

“Scattering like cockroaches when the light turns on” is such a basic and overused metaphor. Mark asks: “Does it please or disturb you to have a mind that equates human beings with cockroaches?” (note he did not say Hispanics)

I ask: does it disturb you to read so little that you’ve not come across this saying yet?

We can’t ship all 12 to 15 million of them back to their home countries, and we can’t arrest them all, so what do we do?

JSG,

Well, for starters, how about making legalization easy and painless with:
-Proof of residency, 5 years
-Clean criminal record in the States
-Proof of employment
-Proof of language adaptation (proof of enrollment in a class, for instance).

Sure, you could probably go farther, but, gee- doesn’t that sound like a reasonable place to start?

Personally, I like Agent Smith’s human analogy in the first Matrix in regards to the cockroach comment.

“Iâ€™d like to share a revelation that Iâ€™ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you arenâ€™t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we… are the cure.”

The first thing I thought of before reading the comments was it’s a clown car. Does that make me racist against clowns?

i love that attitude here. nowhere else do you find posters as concerned with open and free speech that are so afraid of criticism that most times it gets censored out by the whims of their lackey and the rest of the posters follow up by asserting that this is the right thing to do.

if you go into a post with fightin words, then read and digest the opinions of others. Yes its his blog, and I doubt Marks the kind of guy who can’t take what is some pretty valid criticism.

everyone who’s spent time on the internet knows what flaming is. this ain’t it.

..I .. saw nothing racist or dehumanising about the cockroach comment. Didn’t even cross my mind. I wonder what that proves?
===============
It proves that the world has become so PC that the only people you CAN make fun of are white people. (Especially poor southern white people.) Make a tasteless redneck joke, you get a laugh from everyone. Make a similarly tasteless joke about blacks, browns, Asians, Jews, Arabs, gays or anyone else, get the riot act read at ya.

I didn’t even think of “la cucaracha” with the cockroach comment. I just thought of scurrying idiots making a cop’s day harder, because they have some agenda, cop seems to think they’re doing something illegal, and the cop is ostensibly there just to uphold the constitution. I don’t always feel comfy with the actions of all police, but I I’m glad the cops exist. I can think of specific instances where I’d be dead a few times over if they weren’t.

I don’t know the whole story behind this video, but nothing about it says the cop doesn’t have a good reason to chase them. Even if they’re innocent, if it’s a routine traffic stop, it’s illegal to flee the cops. And if you’re abandoning your vehicle to flee the cops, chances are you’re doing something illegal. Would you give up a $15,000 car that you owned and run just because you’re nervous, but haven’t broken any laws?

I pretty much dislike most humans, especially the loud ones who step on my toes, mean ones who think their will is law, and the stupid ones who care more about bling than life. Most humans fit into one or more of these groups, and all these types come in all colors.

nowhere else do you find posters as concerned with open and free speech that are so afraid of criticism that most times it gets censored out by the whims of their lackey and the rest of the posters follow up by asserting that this is the right thing to do.

Tim,

You’ve been down this road before. Do you really want to go there again? We listened to you screaming bloody murder, albeit vowellessly, for weeks last time. It’s a private blog with moderated comments. You know the deal. Take it or leave it.

Sven: Ole, I think ve’re lost in the forest, now vat?
Ole: ‘vell Sven, now ve shoot tree times in de air and den someone comes and rescues us.
Sven: tree times? But I only haf two arrows Ole!
Ole: Uh oh…..

I love Sven, Ole, and Lena. Never lost my love of them, probably never will. (Lutefisk on the other hand is an entirely different subject, and should probably be forbidden under the Geneva Convention if you ask me.)

So here I am reading the comments before watching the video (aka I don’t know who it is the cop is chasing yet) , and saw nothing racist or dehumanising about the cockroach comment. Didn’t even cross my mind. I wonder what that proves?

In your case, Cefeida? God knows.

Heh, I’ve watched it now, and I had to look very hard to notice that maaaybe one of the dudes was kind of brownskinned.

They all were.

Maybe it’s because I’m not American but my radar just doesn’t seem to be well-tuned to detect possible racial profiling.

Possible racial profiling? Dude, that’s la Migra. Why do you think they’re all running, not just the driver?

Well…I think it mostly proves that not being Western, I have no automatic white guilt. Phew.

Lest your statement confuse the other participants, I will discreetly state that you’re east of Vienna but west of Athens. Whether that means you’re “not Western” tends to vary with the century and the speaker’s opinions.

Michael W. Dean @27, 35: Wow, just what this conversation needed: white people feeling sorry for themselves. Also? Most of that rant had SFA to do with the discussion thus far.

Most humans are ants. And there’s too damn many of them, everywhere.

Okay.

You go first.

Also: Would you please stop putting .sig lines at the bottom of your comments? It’s tedious to have to remove them.

Thank you.

(And Arkizzle? A good do-bee doesn’t leave a bunch of superfluous line returns at the end of their comment.)

ScottFree @32, I favor encouraging unionization in Mexico.

Cpt. Tim @55:

everyone who’s spent time on the internet knows what flaming is. this ain’t it.

Who says the highest standard a forum can aspire to is to avoid outright flaming? Conversation can be so much better than that.

To me, what “No direct personal attacks, foul or obscene language, or active flaming” means is “We don’t expect you to display any intelligence, judgement, or manners, and you shouldn’t expect us to protect you from thugs and vandals. Just refrain from killing each other, and otherwise don’t bother us.” It’s a counsel of despair, and I absolutely refuse to accept it as the default standard for conversation.

Abelard, Absimiliard, Noen: I was the Nielsen half of Nielsen Hayden. I consider four kinds of pickled herring to be nature’s most perfect breakfast, and I sure wouldn’t mind if Ingebretsen’s opened a branch in New York. But I draw the line at lutefisk. That stuff is evil.

Antinous @89: Do you have any idea how hard you’re making me bite my tongue?

#24 posted by The Dark Roux , May 12, 2008 3:58 PM
.Well, for starters, how about making legalization easy and painless with:
-Proof of residency, 5 years
-Clean criminal record in the States
-Proof of employment
-Proof of language adaptation (proof of enrollment in a class, for instance).
====-
This is brilliant in its simplicity, and it would work. Unfortunately, it will never be implemented bcs pst-hpp rsnng n th S mks vryn wrrd tht vrs thc grps wll gt pst. Yet ignoring the need for requirements like this is going to make the US a very scary, cramped place in 20 years. The infrastructure already cannot support the people here.

I’d love to implement this tomorrow, and apply to EVERYONE…..from Mexicans to Canadians to Arabs to my own British anglo relatives who come from the same poor white protestant tree as me.

you must take super care of your car to expect the value of a used mini van to be that high.

I really don’t understand why people are so up in arms about immigration in the US. Apart from jobs–which is fair enough really; if someone wants to work for a living, who are you to stop them?–what benefits are there to living in the US? It isn’t illegal immigrants taking jobs, it’s companies exporting manufacturing jobs that used to be relatively high paying and unionised to, among other places, northern Mexico. A Mexican chap takes a job at McDonald’s, everyone gets upset; a corporation closes a factory, fires everyone, and reopens it in Mexico, paying everybody much less, and it’s the economy working the way it should. Strikes me as a bit odd, is all.

According to what one of the elders said, taking an enemy on the battlefield is like a hawk taking a bird. Even though it enters into the midst of a thousand of them, it gives no attention to any bird other than the one that it has first marked.

Every calculus class I’ve taken has taught me to analyze by taking things to their limits (bad English, but didn’t want to use “extrapolate”). When I do that with this name-calling thing, I can think of two eventual outcomes. Either everyone in the future will be deeply offended by any word that’s used to refer to them other than their proper name, or no one will be offended by anyone’s words.

I was thinking the video was purely funny until WHOKNEW said they might just be running into the desert. Hopefully, if they don’t have somewhere to go, they’ll realize they can just find a border patrol, get deported, and try again later.

Having not previously bothered to read this thread, I’m curious: did Mark Frauenfelder (@#3) disemvowel his own comment ex post facto? At the time of his apology? Did Teresa N-H?
Somewhat amusing either way.

And here I thought that Pleasantville was smack in the middle of self-righteous land. But what do I know, I’m from Minnesota. If you don’t watch it I’ll start telling Sven and Ole jokes and you don’t want that.

now that Mark’s had the generosity to apologise for his error, can’t you see that actually the discussion following might just have been valid?

Actually, I find Mark’s apology to be essentially irrelevant (sorry Mark). I already acknowledged that the original comment might not have been meant in a racist way. But it’s still going to be mortally offensive and hurtful to some people. If you use hate speech because that’s how your friends all talk down the pub, you’re still going to get disemvowelled for it. The fact that you didn’t mean it to be racist has to take second place to the level of offense that it causes.

The comment in question was immediately offensive to both Mark and me. That strongly suggests that there will have been a lot of other people out there who don’t comment who also will have perceived it that way. Threads can go toxic very quickly. It was my decision as an assistant moderator to point out that racist comments would be disemvowelled just to make sure that the line was clear.

you must take super care of your car to expect the value of a used mini van to be that high.
——————–
I KNEW someone would go there. Lol….

A Mexican chap takes a job at McDonald’s, everyone gets upset;…
====
I don’t. I don’t want that job. And I am not worried about losing work to people coming into this country. I do tech writing, which can be outsourced over the Internet to India for less than I charge. And there are a lot of well-educated, tech-savvy Indian tech writers who speak English as a second language better than most Americans speak it as their first.

I’m worried about overpopulation, and unlimited immigration. I’m worried about people squishing themselves into limited space like rats, and doing what rats do in that situation: chew each other’s faces off. Literally.

Ole came back to work 15 minutes late. The boss noticed and asked where he had been.
Ole: “Getting a haircut.”
Boss: “On company time?”
Ole: “It grew on company time.”
Boss: “Not all of it.”
Ole: “I didn’t get it all cut off.”

PS: did your recent server meltdown affect your email? I fear you may presume discourtesy on my part, rest assured I have replied.

Regarding Mark’s apology: Thank you Mark. I am always grateful for demonstrations of strength and honor. I admit I myself did not immediately comprehend the racist overtones possible in the “cockroaches” post. I am still not entirely sure there was intent, but a profile titled: “exquisitely bored in Nacodoches” is suspicious.

I have a request for any who are indeed convinced that some “races” (a nonsense term in my lexicon)are “superior” or “inferior”: Please be open, clear and direct. Then we can discuss and all know what we are discussing.

Please just chalk me up as one who didn’t “get” the racist reference in comment #1. I mean
I’ve been around the block a few times, I thought anyway. But when Chris said cockroaches, I thought of cockroaches (You know, the nasty insects who scatter when you turn on the light). I didn’t even know it was a racial slur. I was really surprised when this thread blew up like this.

I meant that you must have grown up in a place where people don’t toss racial epithets around. The jump from ‘idyllic paradise’ to ‘rubes’ is extrapolation on your part.

All I associated the comment with was the “scattering” of the folks in the video, not as any sort of racial epithet. You know why I did that? Not because I’m some rube who grew up in Pleasantville, but because there just ain’t that many Hispanics in Southeastern Australia. Sometimes this stuff really is the result of a cultural gulf, not naivete.

No Romper Room in Ireland, eh. A good do-bee is a child who cleans up after him or herself and exhibits other (adult-defined) virtuous traits. Teresa’s on a campaign to clean up vertical length in threads.

Amen, Mark. I can never read a reference to humans as ‘cockroaches’ without thinking of the anti-Tutsi radio broadcasts in Rwanda just before the genocide. That kind of dehumanization, whether done on behalf of “evil” or on behalf of “humor,” just isn’t cool.

That said, this post strikes as me as particularly “trollbaitish” compared to the usual BB fare. Maybe it’s intended to be a challenge to see how well we can behave . . .

I can certainly see where the cockroach equivalency would be insulting to those of toasty complexion. Even more attractive animals may still elicit an antagonistic response. I have a fondness for raccoons, however applying any “coon” based metaphors could result in significant fist caused facial trauma to myself when used amongst certain self-identified racial demographics.

In the interest of good manners, I choose to use more flattering metaphors. Such as “cute as a kitten” or “busy as a bee” when commenting on the actions of my fellow primates.

I think the Clown Car example is a pleasant one. Most people have positive associations with clowns and their antics.

Oh, and to divert to a peripheral subject. I can never be quite clear on who it is who is overpopulating. From the perspective of resource consuming and carbon-dioxide generation, we seem to have an overpopulation of wealthy people. Are there any programs for providing condoms and birth control information to our most privileged citizens? A restriction in the number of Hilton, Bush or Trump progeny might be quite beneficial.

Maybe this video can spark a debate on immigration, the mistreatment awaiting these new immigrants due to the rights they don’t have as non-citizens, or the fact that border control is nearly impossible with current methods.

Or, since everyone already knows that millions of illegal immigrants pack 14 people into a minivan and head for the underbrush when the cops find them, we can just enjoy a humorous video of a man realizing his job just got too big to handle.

maybe it’s just a regional thing.i,unfortunately,had the same initial response to comment #1 as mr. frauenfelder did.where i live (florida) the cockroaches remark would,in fact,be intended to imply something unpleasant about the speaker’s attitude towards hispanic people.wouldn’t be surprising if that were also the case in california,which is where i think mark is from.

Sorry, Arkizzle; I thought I sounded more cheerful than that. I also forgot that you didn’t grow up hearing about the Do Bee and the Don’t Bee.

I am indeed on a campaign to compress vertical space. Does that sound loony? But the more comments you can see at one time, the more easily you can see the interconnectedness of the conversation, which has all kinds of good effects. Extra line returns stacking up at the bottoms of comments turn into empty vertical space that creates a visual gap in the conversation and our understanding of it.

Am I a crank on this subject? Yes! And yet, like all cranks, I believe I’m right.

You’re far from being the worst offender, by the bye. We’ve had commenters here who’ve absentmindedly thrown half a screen’s worth of superfluous white space into their comments.